Other
People
is so oddly unfocused that it's tempting to call that characteristic a function
of the narrative and not a flaw with it. In its most effective moments, this is
a movie that possesses an intimate understanding of the circumstances of caring
for someone with a critical illness. Surely, then, there must be a reason that
the story veers away from that subject on a seeming whim and mostly ignores the
characters who turn out to be central to the movie's final lesson. Surely
there's a reason for the lengthy dance number performed by an eccentric child in
the middle of this story about a man coping with the realization that he can't
cope with the idea of his mother dying.

If
there is a point to such scenes beyond an easy gag (the dance scene, for
example) or a way to add complications to an already complicated situation
(scenes involving the protagonist's romantic problems), it might just be the
existence of a distraction. Any distraction for David (Jesse Plemons), a New
York writer, could be a welcome one, really. After all, he has returned to his
childhood home in Sacramento to help care for his ailing mother.

The
world offers plenty of interruptions, whether one is looking for them or
not—and even if one wants them or not. This is one of the many, often
unacknowledged cruelties of disease: that life continues mostly unaffected by
the pain and suffering that the disease directly and indirectly causes. It seems
as if the world should stop, but it doesn't.

Writer/director
Chris Kelly's debut feature sums it up in a scene between David and an old
friend named Gabe (John Early). David says that the entire experience in the
first few months of dealing with his mother's cancer is surreal. It's something
that happens to other people. Gabe responds, "Now, you're other
people." It's not just an acknowledgment of the unreal feeling. It's
pointing out that no one else knows what David is experiencing. They have their
lives, and he has his. Those perceptions of the world are irreconcilable.

That
sense of isolation, even among other people, is the movie's most potent thematic
thread. The repeated motif is of David, his mother Joanne (Molly Shannon), or
the two of them together in scenes that should be normal or even pleasant. At
some point, though, the cloud of harsh reality puts a shadow over an ordinary
conversation.

The
thread begins at the start of the movie, which happens to be the end of the
story. As David and his family share a private moment of turmoil, the phone
rings, and a long and rambling message from one of Joanne's friends goes from
expressing sympathy for her to ordering food at a drive-through window.

Someone
David knew in high school, with whom he hasn't spoken in years, thinks David's
problems still have to do with his coming out as gay nine years ago. Once David
tells him that Joanne has cancer, the guy has no clue how to respond. His idea
of help—offering a free movie from a DVD rental box—simultaneously is
touching and woefully misguided. When Joanne returns to the school where she
taught for decades, she is too physically weak to tell a story about a favorite
student. Shannon's performance here perfectly encapsulates the way that even the
strongest, most good-humored person can be so completely diminished in body and
spirit by illness.

David's
professional and love-life struggles take the movie down a series of tangents
that may distract him from his mother's illness (while featuring and creating
problems of their own), but they mainly end up distracting from the core of the
story. David and his long-term boyfriend Paul (Zach Woods) have ended their
relationship. On a brief visit back to New York, his ex suggests that David
should try dating other people. This leads to the dancing kid—somehow—and a
date scene that could play as comedy or heartbreak, if not for how forcibly
awkward it turns.

Of more
pressing concern is the way his family reacts to his work and his sexuality.
There's a repeated suggestion that David's sisters (Maude Apatow and Madisen
Beaty) think their older brother is using his work as a way to separate himself
from his responsibilities as a caretaker. His father Norman (Bradley Whitford)
still hasn't accepted that his son is gay, refusing to even speak the name of
the man David had been dating for years. For his part, David doesn't mention the
break-up, partially to keep his mother happy but also as a way to press his dad
into maybe, finally acknowledging the truth.

Kelly
eventually leads these characters toward the inevitable, and the frankness with
which he handles scenes involving end-of-life decisions, fear in the face of
death, and the desire to find meaning in any of this mess is admirable. He's
also, though, taking us down a path that frames this experience as one that is
uplifting, edging on the border of sappiness. The ultimate answer has to do with
family, and if Other People starts to
slip into mawkishness, it's primarily because the movie doesn't quite earn that
final resolution. It's too busy finding distractions at the cost of the people
and things that, by its own central argument, really matter.